One dirty job

SHERYL AND I have been cleaning our historic Fifth and Maine building, as it is now up for sale. The third, fourth, and fifth floors haven't been used for 40 years or longer, so there is an incredible amount of junk and trash. As we got window sealed, the remains of birds haven't been swept up. We are doing that now. Yuck.


When we purchased the building in 2013, the former owner had it cleaned, and the workers got some of it out, but not all of it. There are two rooms on the third floor full of doors, old trim from remodeling and scrap wood. There is another room on the fourth floor with similar items. Plus there is debris from replacing many windows in the past few years as storms blew through 5th & Maine.

Sheryl has gone up and organized it. My job is to simply take stuff downstairs. We are using the 503 Maine space (formerly the coffee shop) as storage, and we'll hire a hauler to take it away soon.

I spent four mornings last week going up and down five flights of stairs. It's hot and it's dirty, and I wear a mask, but I can only do it for 45 minutes to an hour at a time. SSM employee Steve Harrington and I carried down some old furniture and old mattress/box springs last week. We have to take large pieces of glass and other stuff down, and it's not that the stuff is heavy - it's just bulky and often has to be grabbed one piece at a time.

It's looking a lot better, and it's more than safe to go through. We continue to have showings and we want it to look as good as possible.

Someday we'll see great things happening with the upper floors. Cleaning them out is just a way to show them off to a potential buyer

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